


A Dream Come True

by ideserveyou



Category: Arthur of the Britons
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, Het, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-06
Updated: 2011-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-14 11:45:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideserveyou/pseuds/ideserveyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kai comes to Leni for help</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dream Come True

It was quite a storm. It had been building all afternoon, big black heavy-looking clouds rolling in over the hills; and as darkness fell it finally broke, torrential rain turning the yard and the lanes to mud.

I was thankful to be safe at home with a pile of dry firewood – kindly provided by Llud earlier in the day – and a batch of mending to do, and for once I had no patients to tend.

The lightning flickered and flashed outside in the darkness, and there was a tang of wet earth in the air.

I’ve never minded thunderstorms, but then I can’t hear them. I can feel them coming: they give me a headache and fill me with a restless tension. But once the rain comes, it’s released, and I am at peace again.

 

I bent my head over my stitching: mending a big tear in that soft black leather shirt of Arthur’s. He said he’d caught himself on a branch during the last boarhunt, a few days before. Looked more like a blade-cut to me. As did the wound on his ribcage, which I’d also had the job of mending. He and Kai had been duelling, perhaps, and one or other of them had been distracted. Wouldn’t be the first time, I thought, and I smiled to myself as I secured the final piece of thread.

The lamp flame guttered, and a drift of smoke blew from the hearth. I thought it was just the door-curtain blown loose, and set aside my work and stood up to go and secure it. Then my heart jumped into my mouth.

 

Kai was standing just inside the door.

 

I hadn’t even realised he was back from his mission to Cornwall yet, but there he was, leaning on the doorpost, rainwater streaming from his cloak and from his uncovered hair, plastered close to his scalp. His head was bowed; his hands hung limply by his sides.

He looked up, his face a mask of misery.

‘I’m sorry.’ (I can read Kai’s lips better than I can most people’s; I suppose because I watch them so closely whenever I get the chance.) ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I – I didn’t know where else to go.’

He must have been wandering around in the rain for a while: he was soaked, filthy, and clearly chilled to the bone. I stepped across the room to take him by the arm and draw him closer to the hearth.

 

Then I realised he was weeping.

 

I’d never seen him cry before. I’d known him come close, yes; like the time he was trying so desperately to protect his Saxon friend from being taken away and executed by that pig Mark. Or when he brought Arthur here to have me salve the whip-weals on his back, and made himself look at the damage he’d done.

But he’d always managed somehow to hold back the tears.

Now here he was, shivering and miserable and broken down completely… I felt a pricking at the backs of my own eyes, and an ache in my heart. And before I’d even had time to think about it, I’d flung my arms round him and was holding him close, and he leaned on me and laid his sodden head on my shoulder and drenched me with rain and tears, and I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad, and I think I was both.

After a little while I coaxed him to the fireside, and took the wet cloak off him, and finding the tunic and shirt underneath it soaked as well, I stripped them off in what I hoped was a brisk and businesslike way, although I admit my hands were trembling as I touched his damp bare skin. Well, it was unavoidable… at least a little. I rubbed him down with a coarse cloth, did my best to dry his hair, wrapped a dry cloak round his shoulders, sat him on the bench, pulled his muddy boots off and set them with his clothes by the fire to dry. I hoped he would think it was the heat making my face pink, as I handed him the cloth and gestured that he should take off his soaked breeches…

 

I turned my back and busied myself making the bed. I did, honestly. Although it was very hard not to turn round. It wouldn’t have been fair – not with him in such a state.

When I came back to the hearth, with a cup of mead in my hand, he was decorously wrapped up and sitting with his arms outstretched, warming his hands at the flames. He took the cup and looked at it questioningly. I shook my head, and smiled. _No, nothing in here but mead._ He took a mouthful and I asked the question with my eyes, but he too shook his head. ‘No. No potions. They wouldn’t do any good anyway…’

And then he was weeping again, and I had to take the cup out of his hand as it shook so much, and I stood there with my hand on his shoulder as he sobbed. After a while I went and found a clean cloth and wrung it out and came back to him; took his hands gently away from his face, and wiped away the tears. He made no protest, just sat there docile and exhausted.

 

I gave him back the cup and he finished it thirstily. As he set it down on the bench, Arthur’s black shirt caught his eye; he ran his finger along the line of my repair. ‘You’ve done a good job with this,’ he said, turning back to me. He tried to smile. ‘Can you mend broken hearts as well?’

I shook my head, sighing inwardly for my own poor fractured heart, although I wouldn’t mend it even if I could, if that would mean not loving Kai any more. Then I drew an imaginary sword – _Arthur_ – and brandished it questioningly – _Did you fight?_

He got up and ranged around the hut like a caged animal, clutching the cloak closely around himself as though for protection. Finally he said, ‘Yes, we fought.’ He gestured to the mended shirt on the bench. ‘I lost my temper on the practice ground. I was so angry with him. Until I saw the blood…’

I spread my hands in bewilderment. _But why?_ Then I clasped them together over my heart. _You love each other._

‘I went too far,’ he said. ‘I was impatient with him. Made him a promise. He thought that I was demanding the same from him – and that it meant I didn’t trust him.’

He came back and sat down heavily, looking at me with hopelessness in his eyes. ‘That wasn’t what I meant at all.  But he wouldn’t listen to me.’

I pointed to the door; mimed riding. _He sent you away_. Four miserable days; and I’d missed Kai every hour of every one of them.

 

A spasm of bitterness crossed his face.

 

‘Yes. And I hoped he’d see sense while I was gone. I was ready to apologise, take it back, anything, whatever it took to put it behind us. But I came home tonight to find…’

 

I knew what he’d found. Or rather, who. I’d seen them arrive that morning. I placed my hand flat across my chest; widened my eyes; traced the line of a short cropped fringe across my forehead. _Rowena_.

Our private way of referring to her. Usually it made him smile, but not today.

 

‘In his bedroom. And my gear neatly piled in the hall.’ The tears were welling up again, I could see. ‘I know he takes her to his bed from time to time. It’s never threatened me. But always before, he chose times when I was elsewhere – away from the village, or when I had an eye to another woman myself. This time…’ He choked.

I stabbed with an invisible dagger. _He’s doing it to hurt you_. I winced, and not just to convey my meaning.

He nodded miserably. His fists were clenched. I took the nearest one and opened out the stiff, chilled fingers; clasped them warmly between both my hands. He closed his eyes briefly, mastering himself. ‘You’re a true friend,’ he said. ‘Thank you…’

With my heart in my mouth yet again, I reluctantly let go of him, put my hands together, pillowed my head on them, pointed to the row of pallets by the wall, all thankfully unoccupied. _You’re welcome to sleep here tonight._

The tears spilled over; but when he got up from the bench, it was not to the doorway that he turned.

…

Later I lay awake, gazing across the room at the last pallet in the row, watching the flicker of the dying firelight on the gold of his hair, seeing the piled sheepskins and blankets rising and falling with his breathing.

We had stood by the fireside holding each other for what seemed an eternity and yet was over far too soon. It seemed to comfort him, and that was enough for me… well, if I will be honest, of course, it was nothing like enough, but it was more than I had ever expected, and although I wept inwardly for his unhappiness, still a part of me sang for joy.

My mind was whirling as I lay there sleepless. I didn’t know how to help him – help both of them – and I was thinking over all the love-charms that I knew, to see whether one of those might provide an answer, when I saw him stir under the blankets, and hastily shut my eyes all but a crack, peeking through my lashes and trying my hardest to keep my breathing even, as though in sleep.

 

The mound of fleeces began to move rhythmically. I felt a blush rising to my face, then a rush of sympathy. After all, he’d been away several days, and presumably denied Arthur’s bed for a while before that. I wished I dared get up and go to him, but then he would know I’d been watching.

The movement stopped. I shut my eyes as I saw him sit up and swing his legs to the floor… then couldn’t resist peeking again, and could barely suppress a gasp as he stood up.

 

He hadn’t finished.

 

And all the tales I’d heard from the other girls didn’t do justice to what I was seeing.

He looked down, and then across to where I lay hoping that I still looked convincingly asleep; then he picked up his discarded cloak and wrapped it around himself. Perhaps he was just cold; or perhaps he thought he’d better be covered, just in case he woke me up by moving about.

I thought he would simply go to the pail behind the screen in the corner, to do whatever needed to be done to ease his body and let him sleep; but instead he came over and stood beside my bed.

 

I’d closed my eyes as he drew near, and now I was afraid he’d turned away again, and anyway I had to know; so I stirred and rolled over, pretending I’d just awakened, then looked up and smiled at him as I saw that he was still standing there after all.

He opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come. Then he saw that he didn’t need to say anything.

I lifted back the corner of the blanket and reached out a hand to draw him down onto the bed, barely able to breathe as he slid in beside me.

He was a little shy at first, as indeed was I, but neither of us was exactly new to this. I don’t recall which of us made the first tentative move; but soon both his cloak and my shift were lying on the floor, and we were wrapped around each other every bit as closely as I’d longed for us to be, through all those years of loving him at a distance.

 

Bless him, he was more concerned about being unwashed than he was about anything else. ‘I’ve been riding all day,’ he protested, as I reached a hand down to his groin, and he could see I was intending that my mouth should follow it… but I didn’t mind. He’s one of those who never smells sour, even on the hottest of summer days. Although I  must admit, you could dunk him in the midden several times over and I’d still want him. You can keep your exotic spices and expensive scented oils –  I’d never distilled any perfume that even came close to the fabulous, rich, heady mixture of male sweat and sex coming off him.

 

I couldn’t get enough of it.

 

I rubbed my cheek over the blond curls at the base of that magnificent cock, and kissed the soft skin of his thighs, all the while feeling him growing easier and more confident as he realised I wasn’t about to kick him out of bed for not having bathed before he came to me. 

Perhaps Arthur is more particular, I remember thinking, as I took his balls in my hand and kissed my way up to the tip of his erection, warm and firm and silk-smooth against my lips as I explored it. I was very thorough; I might never have another chance.

His hands moved lightly over my back and my buttocks, setting me afire with every touch.

He arched off the bed as I took the very tip of him into my mouth and worked the skin gently back from it with my lips and tongue. He was close, I could feel, so I didn’t linger there as long as perhaps either of us would have liked.

But I wanted him inside me. I could feel I was ready for him; had been ready for him as soon as I’d clapped eyes on him in his glorious nakedness.

 

So I let him go, and kneeled astride him and took him in; and it was as I had always known it would be. Just wonderful.

Big he might have been, but he slid into me as gentle as you please, and he certainly knew how to make a girl happy; the village girls hadn’t lied about that, either.

I was under no illusions. I was doubtless preferable to a solitary spill over the slop bucket; but it was Arthur he really wanted. Still, I took all that he was offering, and gave to him in return the release that he needed; and as we came, gasping and clinging together, I tried not to mind that his passion was not for my body, even though I could tell that what he was crying out was not my name.

I rolled off him and reached under the mattress for the clean rag I always keep there just in case; he took it from me and cleaned us both, and as I lay there I began to cry.

 

He propped himself on an elbow beside me, put a gentle hand under my chin and tilted my face up so he could look into my eyes. I knew he needed no gestures from me: my feelings were written all over my face, and I couldn’t hide them. I saw him realise the truth, and look at me in sorrowful sympathy. ‘Leni…’ He stroked my cheek. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. And I know how it feels… but I can’t – I can’t promise you anything…’

I laid a finger to his lips; shook my head; kissed him again very gently, willing him to understand. _I wouldn’t want you to. I’m not asking for more. But I’ll always be here if you need me_.

He sighed, and laid his head on my shoulder for a while, stroking my breasts and my belly, comforting me. Then he stirred, and looked at me.

‘Should I go back to my own bed now? Leave you to sleep in peace?’

I shook my head, drew him to me for another kiss, and I swear I only meant to bid him goodnight, but suddenly the fire burned up between us a second time, and I welcomed him in again, and this time it was me he was seeing in the bed with him; and what he couldn’t give to me in love, he did his best to give to me in honest friendship.

 

It was all I could have asked for, and more.

 

Afterwards, as he lay sprawled in sleep, I reached silently down by the bedpost, seeking the little leather bag with the eagle-stones in it, the charm my mother gave me against a man’s seed taking root in my body. Two oval stones, pale-coloured and completely smooth, each with a small, secret hollow inside, in which another tiny stone rolls about freely – I can feel the movement, although I can’t hear the rattling it undoubtedly makes. This charm has been passed down my family for generations, mother to daughter, together with the secret words that must be recited within the hour as you cup the stones in your palm. It has never been known to fail.

 

I fell asleep with my palm still cupped.

…

Next morning we were sitting companionably at the table eating barley bannocks with honey, with the door open wide to let in the warm sunshine, when Arthur walked in.

There were three long scratches down his cheek, and more on the side of his neck; and on his forehead was a swelling lump the size of an egg, already darkening to blue-purple.

She’s got quite a temper on her, that one.

I sat him down on the bench, soaked a cloth in cold water, wrung it out and made him hold it to the bump to cool it, while I fetched my herbs and salves and went to work.

Neither he nor Kai said a word until I was finished.

But Kai was looking at Arthur with such love; all his anger and hurt were gone, blown away like the storm.

At least I’d been able to do that for him, I thought, and I glowed with contentment.

Finally I took the cloth away, anointed the bump with comfrey and woundwort, and tidied the bowls and rags off the table.

 

Arthur heaved a deep breath and held out a hand, not meeting Kai’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

Kai shook his head. ‘It was my fault. I asked too much.’

‘No.’ Arthur was being stubborn, as usual. ‘The fault was mine. You offered me something I was too proud to accept.’

‘I was wrong to do so.’ Kai looked away.

 

And I lost patience with both of them. This could go on all morning, and none of us had all morning. For one thing, there was presumably a furiously upset Jutish Princess storming around the longhouse who might welcome a little feminine sympathy when she’d finished throwing the crockery at poor Llud. And for another thing, if my eyes did not deceive me (and they rarely do, where these two are concerned), something was happening in Arthur’s breeches that would shortly require both Kai’s urgent attention and my absence.

So I took Kai by the right wrist, and put his hand in Arthur’s; pointed to the mended shirt on the bench, and then to both of them, and clasped both hands over my heart; then mimed walking, outlined a pitched roof with my hands, spread my arms wide, clapped a hand to my chest, widened my eyes, traced a line across my forehead with one finger…

 _You two mend your own broken hearts. I’m going to the longhouse to sort out Rowena._

Kai grinned. ‘You might want to borrow a shield.’

Arthur was just sitting there looking dazed and happy.

 

I was smiling too as I paddled through the mud to the hall door.

…

By noon, when leaders and visitors gathered for the midday meal, things were on the mend. Both Llud and the crockery were largely intact, and Llud had done sterling work convincing Yorath it was just another lovers’ tiff and that it had all been Rowena’s fault anyway. The lady herself was still looking somewhat peeved, although a brew of my special mulled mead had helped a great deal. I couldn’t blame her. She knows what the score is, and has long since come to terms with taking second place to Kai in Arthur’s heart; but none of us takes kindly to being used as a weapon in a quarrel not of our own making.

And that particular quarrel, like the storm, had clearly run its course. Arthur and Kai were careful to reappear from different directions and several minutes apart, although as Arthur squeezed my shoulder with grateful thanks, on his way to apologise profusely to Rowena, I had to stifle a laugh.

Arthur was wearing his newly mended leather shirt – the one that had been on the bench in my hut when I’d left the two of them sitting at the table.

Kai noticed me looking, and a delicious smile played over his lips as he placed one hand very briefly over his heart, before turning to Yorath with a deferential air and asking him some polite question about horse breeding…

 

I was smiling again as I went home.

…

For some weeks afterwards I hoped; then I suspected; and yesterday morning I was sick as a dog. And this morning too.

Now I am certain.

 

Perhaps he will have his father’s smile.

 

But how can this be? The charm never fails.

Ah, yes. If you hold the stones and recite the words...

 

But on that happiest of nights, I didn’t.

 

I fell asleep with my palm still cupped… but not around cold hard stones. Oh no.

I couldn’t bring myself to waste the gift I’d just been given. So I put the charm back under the bed, and put my hand somewhere much warmer and pleasanter instead.

I wonder what he’ll say, when I tell him. In fact, I wonder what both of them will say…

I hope there isn’t another storm coming.


End file.
